Running a business is no easy task. You have to keep a number of things in check to ensure that you are making the most out of the working hours and getting the best results from every activity you undertake. Monitoring the activities of competitors is also a big part of running a successful business. However, many people tend to forget this and choose to ignore their competition.
You might also feel that ignoring the competition will help you focus on your own company in a better way but that is not true.
By ignoring them, you will be missing out on a number of important things that can instead have a bad impact on your business. Read on to find out how you harm your business by ignoring your competition:
- Ignoring them will keep you unaware of what’s working for them
By ignoring your competitors, you will be ignoring the things that are making them successful as well. You won’t be able to know what they are doing differently than you and how well the customers are responding to the changes on their website or to their branding.
You will be stuck doing the same thing that you have been doing when you could inspire yourself by analyzing how your competitors are managing to drive up their sales by acquiring new customers.
You can look at the strategies of all your competitors and note down each one’s best features that are receiving a good response from the customers. By using this data, you will be able to shape your own strategy in a much better way.
- It will make you repeat the same mistakes they are doing
Your competitors are as prone to making a strategic mistake as you are. By ignoring them, not only will you be unaware of the things that are working in their favor but also of things that are harming their business. You might be following some of the same strategies as them and therefore, impacting your own business negatively.
You need to analyze your competitors and figure out the things that are harming their business by preventing them from reaching or acquiring more customers. Check if there is a particular style of branding that customers tend to dislike.
This will allow you to avoid making the same mistakes other companies did and create a successful business plan sample for your company.
- You won’t find new market opportunities
It is not necessary that your competitors are catering to the exact same customer base as your business. They might have found a new niche of customers that desire a particular style of branding. By ignoring them, you will not be able to get aware of new market opportunities for the types of products or services you offer.
Keeping track of their target audience will allow you to identify new pastures for marketing. You will be able to capitalize on new market opportunities by expanding into areas where you are not that active but have seen a positive response to your competitors’ products and services.
If you don’t keep track of your competitors, you can miss out on some big market opportunities for your company.
- You might not try new strategies
When you ignore your competitors, you will not know if their strategies are bringing them more success or are harming their business. You will not be aware of how good the response of customers to your business strategies is compared to your competitors’.
This will lead you to believe that your strategies are working out fine and you might end up sticking to them for a long period of time even if you could actually do much better than them.
Over to you…
Now that you know how ignoring your competitors can have a big negative impact on your own business, you need to think about ways of effectively monitoring your competitors.
One of the best ways to do so is to use Stillio, a web archiving tool, to archive their websites and analyze any changes they make to them. This will allow you to gauge customer response to their business model and form yours accordingly.
